It may just be easier to use twitter/identi.ca for the first release to add and receive reminders. I'd suggest we move XMPP to the next version. In fact, perhaps move both to the next version?

You should also be able to specify tags by saying "tag with weekly". This was important for Sandy's Jott integration, and any speech-to-text service we might integrate with in the future.

Sandy also supported lists:

remember groceries

* eggs
* butter
* cheese

Are SMS reminders a bare minimum? It is for me but not sure if it is for others?

SMS is important, but not part of the "bare minimum". See my post on the mailing list. :)

An important feature of Sandy's operation is the positive confirmation of an instruction. E.g. If you email "Remind me to get milk tomorrow at 9:15" she would send back an email confirming "I scheduled: Get milk, Tuesday 2 December at 9:15am. Email reminder at 9:00am". Furthermore, an archive of the original emails for an instruction was available on the web - I found this useful at times when I had not been clear in my emailed instruction and Sandy had scheduled a time that wasn't what I'd meant. Note that confirmed dates must be internationally unambiguous, e.g. "August 7 2009" or "2009-08-07" (NOT "07/08/09")

In response to dcarterza, i would like to generalize that the date formats that were available in the original Sandy were inadequate. The new product must be internationalizable (i18n) - language, date and time formats, etc. I'm asking that English be the first language in the BareMinimums, but that from the outset, please design with these "localization" issues in mind. Thank you.

The general tagging of items was a great feature of Sandy - I used the tag cloud pretty often. Also - the link to Jott made it possible to use her more frequently. You know like when you're driving and you remember something but can't jot a note on a sticky...

Important features to me are: (1) having lists which are printer-friendly like Remember The Milk does, e.g.:

(2) having easy ways to order and/or prioritize those list items (37 Signals tools like http://www.basecamphq.com/ and http://www.backpackit.com/ have great implementations of this -- drag and drop list items to reorder them), and

(3) having an intuitive way to check off list items as done/completed.

I consider it important to handle both european style or american style dates. Particularly since I lived in Italy for a couple years and am married to an Italian. ;-)

One possible option? might be to set your profile for what style of date you as a user want Sandy to use. We'll have to work out the details of whether that's doable or not and whether that's a good option or not.

The thing that makes Sandy absolutely irreplaceable - and has me jumping for joy at the thought of your brave endeavours - has nothing to do with events, oddly enough. It's the fact that by using email alone, I could outsource my brain.

Wish lists. Random notes about particular projects. Online banking service user IDs (not passwords - I was never quite that silly). Anything I needed out of my brain and safe somewhere else. All that could be done elsewhere.

But the fact that I could blast off a "lookup @tag" (yes, tagging is a must) or, indeed a "lookup (any word I like)" and get an answer back was simply magical.

I don't mind having to structure calendar items a bit, a la RTM (using d: for due). In fact, if anything it makes things more accurate - there are times when you want to say "Remind me to book a restaurant for Friday's date night on Wednesday", which might challenge the greatest parsing engine but works fine if instead of the final two words you use "d:Wednesday".

But the searchability of Sandy via email was the best thing ever. That I miss. And that I'll welcome with open arms, if you can get it up and running. Worth a few bucks a month to me, if that's not sacrilege to mention here. Forgive me if it is.

(Editability of everything - not just appointments/todos - is also crucial, especially for those times when the parsing engine breaks down a bit. And by email as well as on a website. Otherwise - well, it's just not Sandy, is it?)

Other key items (although not dealbreakers): twitterability, not because I use twitter to talk to people (I'm afraid I don't) but because it's a way of talking to machines via SMS when I don't have email handy. Submitting multiple items attached to a single tag (that was wonderful, and took Sandy from useful to unmissable).

One wrinkle I'd add is that the microblogging services (twitter/identi.ca etc.) use different tagging conventions than Sandy - #tag for tags, and @username for users, so we may want to make that an option and be able to parse both ways. Tagging with an @ via twitter involves a bit of cognitive dissonance, I think.

I agree with the previous comment about tagging. I think hash tags are the way to go. It's not just Twitter. Tons os places now use @name to designate someone on a service. Moving tag identifiers to hashes would sidestep several issues.

I also think confirmation emails are a must. Especially since we're parsing. The confirmation gives you chance to make sure your message was parsed correctly.

Are we keeping the entire email message the way Sandy did? I didn't see that mentioned, but I think that's important.

And, I think a simple ical feed would be necessary as well as a just in case measure. Maybe not alpha, but definitely for beta. If something dies or explodes (or closes down), any dates imported off your feed prior to the catastrophe would stay in your calendar.

Re: Comment by dcarterza, Dec 01 - An important feature of Sandy's operation is the positive confirmation of an instruction.

I agree this confirmation is very important. Gave me a feeling of confidence in the system that allowed me to release things from my brain. That said, sometimes Sandy misunderstood me. I'd like the confirmation email to include some simple way to correct parsing mistakes. Maybe the confirmation email contains a plain text (or even HTML) feedback form. Something like this (using jeremysj's Dec 02 comment as an example):

I email Sandy: "Remind me to book a restaurant for Friday's date night on Wednesday"

Sandy emails me: I'll remind you about your date on Friday. Correct me here is I misunderstood what you meant: Reminder for: Friday [ ] or Wednesday [ ].

I hit Reply and put an X (or any character) here "Wednesday X?" then send back to Sandy.

She then sends me this: I'll remind you about your date on Wednesday.

My other wish list items: - I'd like the option to have Sandy send back my entire original email so I can include notes, links etc to myself. I often want to simply forward an email from someone to Sandy with a note at the top to "Remind my about this in 3 days". I want that to come back to me with the original email contents so I can just start the requested work.

- Related to the other suggestion, I'd like to have some special character sequence that ends Sandy's parser search of a message. Maybe something like this is in the system already but I never found it. What I'm wishing for is the ability to email this to Sandy:

Remind me next Tuesday to call John. #@#@#

From: John@x.com To: Robert@y.com Subj: Some work for you. Sent: 12/5/2008

Hey Robert,

I was talking to Lori yesterday. She said she ran into a problem with the system last week and needs it fixed before 12/23. Can you call me when you get time to help us? Hopefully by next Wednesday?

---

The #@#@# char sequence stops the parser so the sent date, yesterday, last week, 12/23 and next Wednesday don't confuse the parser. Seems like this would make writing the parser easer and produce a less error prone result.

I'd be happy to help any way I can. I'll be watching with interest. Good luck!

Robert

I considered SMS reminders bare minimum for Sandy. It was the only consistent way I used the service in the past. Regards, Jeff

Robert,

A newline character ended Sandy's parser. This let Sandy execute your command and ignore the attached email message.

I think a newline character is easier to type and handle.